Writer // Artist

Kary English Deserved a Hugo

So I’ve been watching the Hugo controversy with zipped lips, mostly because I’m new to the politics around fandom and I was generally interested in seeing both sides express their views.

I expected people to vote No Award in some cases- especially on slates where the four choices listed three works by the same author. (John C. Wright) That strikes me as illegitimate and a unfair, so the No Award result didn’t phase me when that was the case. (Note Bene: I say this while liking Wright’s works. I can hold both of these ideas in my head.)

What got me was that Kary English didn’t walk with a Hugo for her superb story, “Totaled.” Honestly, read that and tell me it’s not the best damn thing you’ve read all year. I believe she got around 800 votes for a Hugo (which, unless I’m wrong is rather groundbreaking) and No Award got around 3,000. Unbelievable.

I don’t think it was a conspiracy against non left-wing fandom or something, I think that internet pile-on movements are powerful. People who felt that all of the puppies were adequately represented by Vox Day probably reacted with an, “uh-oh, circle the wagons” attitude and voted against all puppy slates out of fear.

Vox Day is like the Donald Trump of Puppygate: if the puppies make reasonable points, his racist and misogynist lunacy distracts from that and scatters everyone like they’re jackrabbits. From Wired:

“[Vox Day] says he doesn’t oppose all women’s suffrage, just women (and most men) voting in a representative democracy… “Women are very, very highly inclined to value security over liberty” and thus are “very, very easy to manipulate.” …At one point, he emailed that he would be “very disappointed” if I failed to quote the Wall Street Journal’s label for him: “the most despised man in science fiction.”

If Correia and Torgersen had any valid points, then Vox Day killed it by using them, and he’s no doubt taking immense pleasure in it. He even admitted in the Wired piece: “I love chaos. I am generally pretty destructive.”

Well, all I have to say is this: It’s much easier to destroy than it is to create. The authors and editors working long hours to create beautiful things that resonate within the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre need to be the winners here, and that is something David Gerrold and Larry Correia can agree one. Let’s hope they realize it soon, or we’re in for the same show next year.